LUCIUS TECHNOLOGY There are many varieties of websites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:[original research?]

Affiliate: enabled portal that renders not only its custom CMS but also syndicated content from other content providers for an agreed fee. There are usually three relationship tiers. Affiliate Agencies (e.g., Commission Junction), Advertisers (e.g., eBay) and consumer (e.g., Yahoo!).Archive site: used to preserve valuable electronic content threatened with extinction. Two examples are: Internet Archive, which since 1996 has preserved billions of old (and new) web pages; and Google Groups, which in early 2005 was archiving over 845,000,000 messages posted to Usenet news/discussion groups.Answer Site: Answer site is a site where people can ask questions & answer questions like Yahoo! AnswersBlog (web log): sites generally used to post online diaries which may include discussion forums (e.g., blogger, Xanga).Brand building site: a site with the purpose of creating an experience of a brand online. These sites usually do not sell anything, but focus on building the brand. Brand building sites are most common for low-value, high-volume fast moving consumer goods (FMCG).City Site: A site that shows information about a certain city or town and events that takes place in that town. Usually created by the city council or other “movers and shakers”.the same as those of geographic entities, such as cities and countries. For example, Richmond.com is the geodomain for Richmond, Virginia.Community site: a site where persons with similar interests communicate with each other, usually by chat or message boards, such as MySpace or Facebook.Content site: sites whose business is the creation and distribution of original content (e.g., Slate, About.com).Corporate website: used to provide background information about a business, organization, or service.Electronic commerce (e-commerce) site: a site offering goods and services for online sale and enabling online transactions for such sales.Forum: a site where people discuss various topics.Gripe site: a site devoted to the critique of a person, place, corporation, government, or institution.Humor site: satirizes, parodies or otherwise exists solely to amuse.Information site: contains content that is intended to inform visitors, but not necessarily for commercial purposes, such as: RateMyProfessors.com, Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia. Most government, educational and non-profit institutions have an informational site.Java applet site: contains software to run over the Web as a Web application.Mirror site: A complete reproduction of a website.Microblog : a short and simple form of blogging.News site: similar to an information site, but dedicated to dispensing news and commentary.Personal homepage: run by an individual or a small group (such as a family) that contains information or any content that the individual wishes to include. These are usually uploaded using a web hosting service such as Geocities.Phish site: a website created to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business (such as Social Security Administration, PayPal) in an electronic communication (see Phishing).Political site: A site on which people may voice political views.Porn site: A site that shows sexually explicit content for enjoyment and relaxation, most likely in the form of an Internet gallery, dating site, blog, social networking, or video sharing.Rating site: A site on which people can praise or disparage what is featured.Review site: A site on which people can post reviews for products or services.School site: a site on which teachers, students, or administrators can post information about current events at or involving their school. U.S. elementary-high school websites generally use k12 in the URL, such as kearney.k12.mo.us.Search engine site: a site that provides general information and is intended as a gateway or lookup for other sites. A pure example is Google, and well-known sites include Yahoo! Search and Bing (search engine).Shock site: includes images or other material that is intended to be offensive to most viewers (e.g. rotten.com).Social bookmarking site: a site where users share other content from the Internet and rate and comment on the content. StumbleUpon and Digg are examples.Social networking site: a site where users could communicate with one another and share media, such as pictures, videos, music, blogs, etc. with other users. These may include games and web applications.Video sharing: A site that enables user to upload videos, such as YouTube and Google Video.Warez: a site designed to host or link to materials such as music, movies and software for the user to download.Web portal: a site that provides a starting point or a gateway to other resources on the Internet or an intranet.Wiki site: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Wikipedia and Wikihow).Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business’s products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of e-commerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site). A fan site may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity.

Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the website). Very large websites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at multiple locations.

In February 2009, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain names and content on them in 2009, compared to just 18,000 websites in August 1995.